Umm, business doesn't work that way

[calulu]

I've been lucky lately, I've spent less time with the Stupids and more doing other things like management type tasks, so I've had less sucky customers. And if I do I've been so relaxed lately I coo in a sympathetic voice how sorry I am without really taking in anything the insane customer is saying. It seems to completely diffuse the crazy to handle them this way.

Last night I had a funny one Lady calls up and has no idea how ordering flowers over the phone works..

Lady: Uh yeah, my brother is sickly and de doctors are gibing him about six mo months to live. I needs to put flowers on layaway. Iffen I sends you a 25 dollar money order once a month ken I gets a casket spray and a bleeding heart display?
Me: Sorry, credit cards only for the week of the delivery. We don't offer layaway..

[Broomjockey]

That... uh... wow. Lay-away on a casket arrangement. That's very depressing.

[NateTheChops]

That... uh... wow. Lay-away on a casket arrangement. That's very depressing.

What's even more depressing is if the man actually survives she'd be out 150 dollars and then she'd have to explain just what she was in such a hurry to mourn over him for.

[South Texan]

Lady: Uh yeah, my brother is sickly and de doctors are gibing him about six mo months to live. I needs to put flowers on layaway. Iffen I sends you a 25 dollar money order once a month ken I gets a casket spray and a bleeding heart display?

That one actually is sweet and very sad at the same time. She wants to do what she has been taught is "right" and obligatory for her brother's funeral; but doesn't have the money to do it, so she is trying to plan ahead with the costs.

She obviously cares about him if she is willing to spend a lot of money on something so frivolous just to honor him. If she didn't care about him, she would be spending the money on herself.

[calulu]

That amount, 150, would only get a medium sized spray, no bleeding heart, no casket spray much less the two of them.

I read yesterday that Detroit and Los Angeles were having issues with huge piles of unclaimed corpses in the freezers at the medical examiners offices because families in this economy cannot even afford the $650 for a simple cremation for their loved ones and the counties are out of money for burials of the indigent. Makes me sad because what does that say about us as a society if we cannot even simply bury our dead. I'm not talking huge spectacles with masses of flowers and weeping relatives, but simple box and immediate family.

There's a lot more I feel like saying but I don't want to verge over into fratching territory.

[NateTheChops]

I made my burial instructions very simple for my family to follow.

Harvest whatever organs are useful. Stick the rest of me in a cardboard box and give me a huge pyre funeral like Qui Gon Jinn.

Stick my ashes in a folger's cannister and empty them over Lake Champlain. Shouldn't run more than about two hundred dollars if you light my hair on fire and wrap me in old copies of Reader's Digest soaked in kerosene.

[Salesmonkey]

Just lay me down on the family compost heap.

[Rapscallion]

Harvest whatever organs are useful. Stick the rest of me in a cardboard box and give me a huge pyre funeral like Qui Gon Jinn.

I'd be up for a Viking longship. That would be fairly nifty, though I wouldn't really be in a position to watch it.

Rapscallion

[calulu]

I've already told the family to save the money on the funeral, have a big party up at the church, play lots of worship music, laugh, make good food and invite all the poor that come to the soup kitchen, homeless shelter and senior center I volunteer at. I want a big party. Wouldn't cost much to feed them all for a day. Celebration of a life.

[Salted Grump]

My dad's favourite joke about it was 'When I die, push me off the tractor, and till me under in the back forty.'

He didn't get that wish, but he's scattered all over the back forty instead.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

My dad's favourite joke about it was 'When I die, push me off the tractor, and till me under in the back forty.'

He didn't get that wish, but he's scattered all over the back forty instead.

That's close enough . . . at least he's on the back forty.

I know my Mom has said she wants to be cremated and her ashes scattered out here in the front yard in the same bed where our pets are interred. She's also an organ donor, so whatever organs can be used will be harvested so someone else can have a chance.

[Andara Bledin]

I read yesterday that Detroit and Los Angeles were having issues with huge piles of unclaimed corpses in the freezers at the medical examiners offices because families in this economy cannot even afford the $650 for a simple cremation for their loved ones and the counties are out of money for burials of the indigent.

Well, you have to remember that we have to buy an approved casket for the cremation, even though that casket never goes into the fire.... gah...

Harvest whatever organs are useful. Stick the rest of me in a cardboard box and give me a huge pyre funeral like Qui Gon Jinn.

Stick my ashes in a folger's cannister and empty them over Lake Champlain.

Well, sure, the whole thing itself won't cost much.

Now, the fines you'd get by even attempting to do that, however.....

^-.-^

[NateTheChops]

Well, sure, the whole thing itself won't cost much.

Now, the fines you'd get by even attempting to do that, however.....

^-.-^

I wouldn't get the fines. I'd be dead.

[Primer]

DH and I both (jokingly) say to throw us in the burn pit with the rest of the trash. In actuality, we've both agreed on "cheapest way."

[cinema guy]

Now, the fines you'd get by even attempting to do that, however.....

There are indeed very stringent environmental regulations about environmental emissions for cremation.